I remember going to an event in Vancouver on electoral reform a few years ago. I think you were the person who observed that if you ask people, "Are you interested in politics?" They'll say no. But if you ask, "Are you interested in taxes?" Taxes, for sure. "How about public services like health care, or education, or policing, or roads?" Definitely.
Of course there's people who are very interested in politics, just as there's people who are very interested in sports. And there may be some diffusion of knowledge at election time via word of mouth, or via the voter's guides which appear in the final week before an election. But I don't know if it's realistic to expect most people to spend a lot of time learning about politics.
In its current state, democratic politics resembles the old Gong Show: if things aren't going well, it's time to change the government. This decision may not be well-informed, but the peaceful transfer of power (counting heads instead of breaking heads) is *the* key advantage of democracy compared to autocracy, where it's not possible to replace a leader who's outlived his usefulness without civil war or revolution. This weakness was recently highlighted by Xi Jinping removing the ten-year limit on leadership, put in place by Deng Xiaoping three decades ago.
Josh Barro points out that since Covid, the quality of public services has declined significantly, and this is a big problem for progressive governments. Progressives need to raise their expectations of what government can deliver. Mike Moffatt has been making similar observations. https://www.joshbarro.com/p/since-covid-the-government-has-gotten
That was, indeed, me. I still say that. And I agree with that distinction. I also agree with its limits. I think capacity building becomes important, there, alongside community building. Not everyone will be become a political hobbyist or routinely engaged, but we can bolster numbers and we can ensure that there are civil society outposts that facilitate more engagement and, when necessary, act as proxies. In essence, I think we've gone too far into the liberal individualist mode of the person as as production unit and it's made for a weakened and imbalanced public sphere (a bad pluralist democracy).
The merit of participatory democracy and an engaged public is inarguable. However, it has been my actual experience that there is a great divide between 'should' and what 'is.' Add to it a system that encourages apathy, ignorance and to borrow from TOO DUMB, 'System 1' decision making, the likelihood that people care about politics beyond the superficial, the easily gaslit, the emotive, is thin at best. Entire systems have been built around our politics that manipulate the voter to depress participation in the unwanted group and coerce specific outcomes from a target group, all paid for by the manipulators and all increasingly legal. The institutions themselves more and more create and protect inequity, so much so that people are left worrying more about surviving than engaging in any advanced, let alone, nuanced discussion of politics. And it is done so on purpose in my opinion. Years ago I ran across what I think is an excellent passage that applies to political engagement from a biologist. I have never been able to verify the passage and have seen others plagiarize it, but it’s content here has merit. After outlining natural science and its reliance on objective quantifiable components, he states;
“On the other hand economics is an artifact of human imagination, and the agreement among certain humans who "play the games" together -- thereby it is a social technology. There is no underlying physical reality other than what is identified by the players to be components. Granted, the interactions within the system may be complex, and the economic properties are determined by what people study. Nevertheless, in the economic properties are determined by and limited only by the beliefs of the "players." To build economic models one must assume certain features, and the models become part of the generators of the results. Since they are not inherently tied to the physical and biological realities, they may fail arbitrarily as the physical and biological world view of humans change -- or as people believe the physical and biological world exists. Economics in large part reflects human belief systems. When physical and biological constraints become seriously constrained for humans, economics becomes irrelevant. The game ends.”
Dick Richardson (1/28/2001)
Ph.D., Professor, Integrative Biology
That last line very much, I think, applies to the current state in modern democracies and are the core reason for the growth of dangerous authoritarian impulses. We are heading away from participatory democracy it would seem.
That is such a powerful way to put it. Thanks for this. It's one of the reasons I try to pair my critiques of democracy and my appeals to participatory institutions with a call for resource equality -- you can't separate one from the other. We often forget material concerns when we discuss democracy (or politics more broadly) and that is a serious mistake.
The one thing I would add to this is that politics seems to be much easier for individuals to grasp at the local level, especially when it comes to getting work, paying fees or getting a local public work done. Almost everyone can get their arms around that. Identification with a larger society which is showing its colors and subdivisions, perhaps that's where the difficulty lies.
Totally. And yet it also tends to produce limited engagement electorally (see the ON municipal elections and BC, too). But I think you're right and it makes me think of B. Anderson and the concept of imagined communities. By the time you've got to produce some attachment at the level of a national state, you're putting in a lot of work.
I remember going to an event in Vancouver on electoral reform a few years ago. I think you were the person who observed that if you ask people, "Are you interested in politics?" They'll say no. But if you ask, "Are you interested in taxes?" Taxes, for sure. "How about public services like health care, or education, or policing, or roads?" Definitely.
I would draw a distinction between *governing* (providing public services funded through taxes) and *politics* (deciding who runs the government). As I understand it, political scientists like Achen and Bartels ("Democracy for Realists") have found that voters aren't well-informed. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/01/30/book-review-democracy-for-realists-why-elections-do-not-produce-responsive-government-by-christopher-h-achen-and-larry-m-bartels/
Of course there's people who are very interested in politics, just as there's people who are very interested in sports. And there may be some diffusion of knowledge at election time via word of mouth, or via the voter's guides which appear in the final week before an election. But I don't know if it's realistic to expect most people to spend a lot of time learning about politics.
Eitan Hersh also points out that being very interested in politics ("political hobbyism") is different from getting involved (e.g. political volunteering). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/political-hobbyists-are-ruining-politics/605212/
In its current state, democratic politics resembles the old Gong Show: if things aren't going well, it's time to change the government. This decision may not be well-informed, but the peaceful transfer of power (counting heads instead of breaking heads) is *the* key advantage of democracy compared to autocracy, where it's not possible to replace a leader who's outlived his usefulness without civil war or revolution. This weakness was recently highlighted by Xi Jinping removing the ten-year limit on leadership, put in place by Deng Xiaoping three decades ago.
Josh Barro points out that since Covid, the quality of public services has declined significantly, and this is a big problem for progressive governments. Progressives need to raise their expectations of what government can deliver. Mike Moffatt has been making similar observations. https://www.joshbarro.com/p/since-covid-the-government-has-gotten
One final comment: there's significant challenges to the Gilens and Page study. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study
That was, indeed, me. I still say that. And I agree with that distinction. I also agree with its limits. I think capacity building becomes important, there, alongside community building. Not everyone will be become a political hobbyist or routinely engaged, but we can bolster numbers and we can ensure that there are civil society outposts that facilitate more engagement and, when necessary, act as proxies. In essence, I think we've gone too far into the liberal individualist mode of the person as as production unit and it's made for a weakened and imbalanced public sphere (a bad pluralist democracy).
I've also considered the counterpoint to G&P but I found their response to be compelling (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/23/critics-challenge-our-portrait-of-americas-political-inequality-heres-5-ways-they-are-wrong/).
The merit of participatory democracy and an engaged public is inarguable. However, it has been my actual experience that there is a great divide between 'should' and what 'is.' Add to it a system that encourages apathy, ignorance and to borrow from TOO DUMB, 'System 1' decision making, the likelihood that people care about politics beyond the superficial, the easily gaslit, the emotive, is thin at best. Entire systems have been built around our politics that manipulate the voter to depress participation in the unwanted group and coerce specific outcomes from a target group, all paid for by the manipulators and all increasingly legal. The institutions themselves more and more create and protect inequity, so much so that people are left worrying more about surviving than engaging in any advanced, let alone, nuanced discussion of politics. And it is done so on purpose in my opinion. Years ago I ran across what I think is an excellent passage that applies to political engagement from a biologist. I have never been able to verify the passage and have seen others plagiarize it, but it’s content here has merit. After outlining natural science and its reliance on objective quantifiable components, he states;
“On the other hand economics is an artifact of human imagination, and the agreement among certain humans who "play the games" together -- thereby it is a social technology. There is no underlying physical reality other than what is identified by the players to be components. Granted, the interactions within the system may be complex, and the economic properties are determined by what people study. Nevertheless, in the economic properties are determined by and limited only by the beliefs of the "players." To build economic models one must assume certain features, and the models become part of the generators of the results. Since they are not inherently tied to the physical and biological realities, they may fail arbitrarily as the physical and biological world view of humans change -- or as people believe the physical and biological world exists. Economics in large part reflects human belief systems. When physical and biological constraints become seriously constrained for humans, economics becomes irrelevant. The game ends.”
Dick Richardson (1/28/2001)
Ph.D., Professor, Integrative Biology
That last line very much, I think, applies to the current state in modern democracies and are the core reason for the growth of dangerous authoritarian impulses. We are heading away from participatory democracy it would seem.
That is such a powerful way to put it. Thanks for this. It's one of the reasons I try to pair my critiques of democracy and my appeals to participatory institutions with a call for resource equality -- you can't separate one from the other. We often forget material concerns when we discuss democracy (or politics more broadly) and that is a serious mistake.
The one thing I would add to this is that politics seems to be much easier for individuals to grasp at the local level, especially when it comes to getting work, paying fees or getting a local public work done. Almost everyone can get their arms around that. Identification with a larger society which is showing its colors and subdivisions, perhaps that's where the difficulty lies.
Totally. And yet it also tends to produce limited engagement electorally (see the ON municipal elections and BC, too). But I think you're right and it makes me think of B. Anderson and the concept of imagined communities. By the time you've got to produce some attachment at the level of a national state, you're putting in a lot of work.